Yesterday we’ve ordered a 3 days New York Pass at www.newyorkpass.com. These Passes are going to give us free admission the 70 New York City Attractions as Museums, different Tours and other Attractions. As well as free entry, the New York Pass also gives us the possibility the skip the long waiting lines.

Because we are leaving for NYC next week, it was not possible the get the Passes delivered to Germany, so we have to pick them up at Planet Hollywood at Times Square, which is not a problem for us at all because the first 4 days of our NYC-trip we are staying pretty close to Times Square.

Things we are planning on doing with those New York Passes are: visiting the Empire State Building and Top of the Rock to experience the views of New York City. We will also plan one or two tours. First we wanted to do the Food on Foot Tour, but unfortunately this Tour is not available in the period we are in New York. So we have chosen to do the NBC Studio Tour. This Tour is going to take us in the studios of NBC New York. We are really looking forward to do this tour.

The New York Pass also includes free entrance for a lot of New York Museums. We’re not sure which museums we are going to visit, but examples are The Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History. So lots of things we can do and visit in those first 4 days in New York.

The first city trip of 2012 isn’t started yet but the next one is already planned. The planning started a couple of months ago during a FaceTime conversation when Yves and Joke told us they were planning a trip to Nürnberg in April 2012. Off course we are delighted by the 2 of them visiting us but they wanted to see more of Germany. We discussed a lot of options and then we told Berlin was on a driving distance of less than 450 kilometers from our home (4 hours driving).

So plans were made and last weekend Yves and Sander talked over FaceTime since bookings.com has some specials for April online. Yves and Joke booked a hotel in Nürnberg with a room-rate from less 40€ a night. And Yves is lucky since the Frühlingsfest is there during there stay in Nürnberg which means party and beer!

And for Berlin we’ve booked the Hotel am Zoo which is located on the Kurfüstendamm which is the most famous shopping street of the former West-Berlin. This is very close to the hotel where we slept last year and the location is perfect for a short trip and that with a room-rate from 60€ a night.

What we do in Berlin is up to Yves and Joke! The only things Danielle wants to do is shopping in the KaDeWe and getting some Dunkin’ Donuts! We are looking forward to this week already!

For a standard New York City trip you won’t need a rental car but as most of the readers know we are not going on a standard city trip. After the staying first 5 days in Manhattan we will travel to Staten island for the rehearsal dinner of the wedding we will attend. And from Staten Island we need to go to the party location in Garfield, New Jersey. This is almost impossible by public transportation which made us decide to rent a car for the last couple days.

For Danielle there is another important reason for renting a car. She wants to visit the 2 biggest Outlet centers in New Jersey and having a car to drive around makes this a lot easier.

As with our last 2 Florida trips we’ve booked our car with www.usa-reisen.de. And since I’m the one who is driving most of the time I got to pick the car type. This means it’s going to be a SUV again. The size should be comparable with a Chevrolet Equinox (see picture). I guess it will be big enough for the 2 of us.

Already in september we had set the a date for Philippe his 50th birthday party. The reason why the date was set early was because the party took place in Antwerpen (Belgium). Besides the birthday party we would see some people we hadn’t seen in years again.

On Saturday the 4th of February we left our place at 6 o’clock in the morning and because of the easy traffic we arrived in Belgium just after 10 o’clock. The first stop was Maasmechelen Village which is an outlet shopping center. Both of us bought new stuff Sander in the Tommy Hilfiger store and Danielle was really lucky and found a pair of Uggs boots.

After the shopping we went to the Holiday inn Antwerp City North where we would meet Ruud, Ria, Yves, Joke and Aaron. After some drinks in the hotel lobby we went out for the city to visit the Disney Story on the Meir and for a quick bite a the Subway.

After this quick bite it was time to walk back tot he hotel where Philippe, Dieter and Frank would join us for the evening. After the presenting the gifts (mustard and a Bose Soundlink) we went for a walk to Mie Katoen. Mie Katoen is a fondue restaurant. The food tastes greats and after your visit you can enjoy the smell for a couple of days since the smell sticks to every piece of clothing you wear.

After dinner we went out to a bar in the city center of Antwerpen called “Den Engel” and we finished the night in the hotel bar. Although bar is a big word it was a self-service bar but the bear tasted great. Somewhere after 3 o’clock we got to our beds. It was a long day from almost 22 hours but it was great to be party of this party.

And the best thing was that the party wasn’t over yet since it continued with a Siberian style geocaching tour. Philippe & Dieter created their own geocaching route which we wanted to walk. After breakfast together with Philippe, Dieter, Aaron, Ruud en Ria we went to the start of the tour which consisted of 5 traditional caches and one mystery cache. It was ice-cold but we had a pleasant time. Ruud (2 finds) and Sander (4 finds) found all of the 6 caches within 2,5 hours.

After the cache route we went to the Netherlands for a brief visit of our families where we slept in Kruisland at the place of Sanders sister. On Monday we drove back to Germany.

We had a great weekend and we can’t wait for the next gathering!

Picture credits and more pictures: Motorbeer.nl & PhilDie’s Fotoalbum 

Now we are both visiting New York City for the first time in our lives we wanted to plan the things we’d like to do and if necessary reserve tickets.

Danielle definitely wants to eat cupcakes when we are there. She is talking about the Magnolia Bakery since we started planning the trip. I head never heard of this famous bakery but I’m sure we will visit on of their locations.

And I told Danielle I wanted to visit the famous Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. The store entrance is a glass cube only showing the Apple Logo. It’s open 24/7 and 365 days a year I’m sure we are able to fit it in our schedule.

And we both want to visit at least one broadway show but we will figure out which and when if we are there. Which show we want to visit didn’t figure out yet but with The Lion King, Mary Poppins, Wicked and a lot more to pick from we are sure that it will be good one!

When we were both young we wanted to visit the World Trade Center in New York to overview the big apple. But on 9/11/01 this was made impossible. The new One World Trade Center is not finished yet but the 9/11 Memorial is opened for visitors. This is the only thing we’ve planned ahead since this is something we want to see because this event changed a lot all over the world.

We know that this is not everything we want to do but these are the highlights we think to see during our trip. If there are additional suggestion please leave these in the comments!